Then on into G.o.dthab and to the Hotel Grnland for a brief pause before going to dine with the Governor in a party of about twenty, with good food round a crowded dining table in a clapboard house built about 1800. I was getting a bit tired by the end of dinner (11 p.m. local time, 3 a.m. Copenhagen time) although it was still broad daylight.
TUESDAY, 23 MAY. Greenland.
A morning tour of the projects mainly paid for by the Community: a new airstrip, a fish packing factory and a technical college. Then an early lunch in the hotel given by the munic.i.p.ality of G.o.dthab (or Nuuk as it is called in Greenlandic). This was rather like a Chinese meal, with a splendid series of optional dishes. The first course was composed of herrings, eels, plaice, shrimps, ham and a variety of other things. Then there was a whole range of hot courses: a duck, liver and bacon, slices of pork, lamb chops, with nearly everything in sight imported from 2000 miles away. With the subsidy they get (partly from us, but mainly from Denmark) no doubt they can afford it.
There was a nice speech from the deputy mayor (the mayor was in Canada) and a substantial response from me. Then a 2.15 meeting with various politicians, officials, etc., during which the Governor told us that bad weather was moving in fast from the south, and that we might be stuck for days if we did not get away quick. Accordingly, after a press conference, we took off for Sndre Strmfjord at 4.30. We dined at the fairly basic hotel there with the large contingent from the Danish Ministry of Greenland which was accompanying us, the only slightly smaller one from the Danish Foreign Ministry, the Governor, who had flown out and was indeed coming back to Copenhagen with us for no very good reason, and a few politicians, including Motzfeldt, who was the leader of the left-wing opposition to the EEC and the most intelligent politician I met in Greenland.
WEDNESDAY, 24 MAY. Greenland and Brussels.
An expedition down to the port which was about 14 kms away, and which was still frozen up but which will become ice-free within three or four weeks and remain so until mid-November. Then up to a high point above the airfield with a magnificent view looking up to the remarkable phenomenon of the Ice Cap, which begins about twenty miles away. It extends over 90 per cent of the country, is about 1700 miles long and 900 miles wide, has a depth in places of 10, 11 or even 12,000 feet, and n.o.body is certain what exactly is underneath it. It contains such a volume of frozen water that, were it to melt, the level of the sea all over the world would go up about 17 metres, which would obliterate a good number of major cities.
One o"clock plane to Copenhagen, where we arrived just after 9 p.m., and Brussels by avion taxi an hour and a half later. Fernand Spaak, our Washington representative, called for a late-night talk.
THURSDAY, 25 MAY. Brussels.
An hour"s meeting with Ecevit,74 Turkish Prime Minister. He presented a series of detailed demands, which I think I turned reasonably, while stressing that we wanted very much to put things on a better basis and that we had no intention of allowing the Greeks to import the Aegean quarrel into the Community. A lunch of twenty people for him, with speeches afterwards, in the Berlaymont.
FRIDAY, 26 MAY. Brussels and Lucca.
Plane to Milan for my Whitsun holiday. It took off late but then, almost unbelievably, I got from Brussels to Pisa, including a change, in two hours. Jennifer and the Gilmours were still at the airport, having been much more delayed, so we drove out together and arrived at La Pianella at 2.30. As we mounted the drive it typically began to rain and poured for the rest of the day.
FRIDAY, 2 JUNE. Lucca and Paris.
Uncertainly better weather. 5.15 plane from Pisa to Paris via Milan. Over an hour late at Orly. Drove to the Emba.s.sy where, with the Hendersons out to dinner, I worked until midnight on boxes of papers which had arrived from Brussels. A perfect evening in Paris, the continuation of the spectacular period of weather which had been going on all over Northern Europe while we had been rained upon in Italy.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 3 JUNE. Paris.
Worked in my room all the morning and then lunched with Nicko, Mary and Jennifer on the terrace. Dined at the Bra.s.serie Lipp with the Hendersons, Alex Grall, the head of the publishers Fayard, and Francoise Giroud.75 I liked him very much indeed. (I had met her before.) We drove back round the ile St Louis and the ile de la Cite on a very warm summer evening with Paris looking splendid, the streets full of people and a greater sense of animation than I had felt there since the thirties.
MONDAY, 5 JUNE. Brussels.
A quite interesting 10.30 meeting with the Yugoslav Amba.s.sador. The Yugoslavs present a problem no less than the Turks at the moment, and there is therefore a need to treat them with considerable sensitivity in view of their hinge position and the possible complications of t.i.to"s death, whenever that comes.
Downstairs to receive Morarji Desai,76 Prime Minister of India, first for a private talk and then for a lunch with about half the Commissioners. I had not seen him since the Commonwealth Finance Ministers" Conference in 1968. I remembered particularly his very graceful reply to my toast in the Painted Hall at Greenwich. In spite of a lot of fuss beforehand about what he could or could not eat, with his own chef being sent in and some worry on our part as to whether we ought to have alcohol, it was a particularly agreeable lunch, Desai making a striking impression. Whether he is a great man or not, I don"t know. What he is, more surprisingly, is an extremely agreeable man, who talks very freely about Indian and world politics, perhaps slightly self-righteous, but with enough sense of humour to make it tolerable. We had a normal meal, with wine, about which he seemed totally unconcerned. The Indians with him mostly had normal meals but without alcohol. He had his own meal, composed of bits of garlic, bits of milk, bits of curd, bits of G.o.d knows what else, but with no sign of his special recycled drink. Towards the end of the meal one of our more sodden and less bright elderly waiters swayed towards him trying to pour out a large gla.s.s of Remy Martin. "No, no," I said hurriedly, "I don"t think that would be quite right for the Indian Prime Minister." Desai thought it rather funny. He made an agreeable speech afterwards, and it was generally a good occasion.
An afternoon"s work, a 6 o"clock meeting with Ortoli, and then to a dinner with the Confederation of European Socialist Parties, to which most other Socialist Commissioners came. Robert Pontillon, the International Secretary of the French Socialist Party since Guy Mollet"s day, was in the chair. It was just a worthwhile occasion, with a tolerable but not very exciting discussion afterwards.
TUESDAY, 6 JUNE. Brussels, Luxembourg and Brussels.
Avion taxi to Luxembourg at 8.15. A quick meeting on the agenda with K. B. Andersen and into the Foreign Affairs Council. No hiccups in the morning, and then a Council lunch largely taken up by my giving them an account of my meeting with Ecevit, in which they were unusually interested. Council again from 2.45. Desultory at times, blockage on the Regional Fund between the Italians and the Germans, which I almost, but not quite, alas, managed to solve. I was tired of the Council by 7.45 and went back to Brussels (even though it went on until 9.30) by avion taxi.
WEDNESDAY, 7 JUNE. Brussels.
Commission for seven and a half hours. Lunch with Henri Simonet who was just a little battered I thought about Zaire, but not more than that.
I had Francis Ortoli to dine alone, rue de Praetere. Rather good conversation, probably more French than English, but a lot of it about linguistics. He claimed, surprisingly and I think hyperbolically, though no doubt flattering in intention, that he could always understand my English very well, much more so, he claimed, than either Tugendhat"s or Burke"s,77 mainly, he said, because our minds operated so similarly that he could always tell the direction of my thought even though my language was complicated!
THURSDAY, 8 JUNE. Brussels and London.
An 11 o"clock meeting with the Austrian Foreign Minister (Pahr), who was a very sensible and worthwhile man with whom I had an hour"s conversation. Then I saw Ronald b.u.t.t of The Times/Sunday Times. I have never been a fan of his, but he was friendly and sensible on this occasion. Then, suddenly, a request from Sigrist, the German Permanent Representative, to pay an urgent call. He arrived to explain that Genscher had made a diary c.o.c.k-up for the following week and could not fulfil his luncheon engagement with me for the following Tuesday in Strasbourg. Would I accept Dohnanyi in his place and have Genscher to lunch a few weeks later? It hardly seemed to warrant a special amba.s.sadorial visit, but this was I suppose courteous.
A COREPER lunch which was much as usual. At 3.15 I saw Garland, the Australian Minister for Special Trade Negotiations, an agreeable, youngish man whom I had met before. We had decided beforehand to give him slightly rough treatment in view of the way Fraser behaves and to tell him that there was no future in this. We wanted to improve relations with Australia but we would be d.a.m.ned if we would be bullied into doing so, and if they went on making disobliging statements after every meeting it would make it very difficult to achieve anything. I was not sure how taken aback he was. I think his Amba.s.sador may have warned him, but at any rate he was uneasy and never recovered the initiative. I was able to end the interview more graciously by taking him to the lift and talking about one or two mutual acquaintances.
6.25 plane (semi-punctual) to London, and to the Harlechs78 by 8.15 for the dinner preceding their ball. The dinner was for thirty-two or thirty-six, with a curious mixture of strands: Mrs Ona.s.sis, Sam Spiegel, Droghedas, David Cecils, Lee Remick, Peter Hall, for example. I sat between Pamela Harlech and Jackie, about which I could not complain. Jackie was at her best, I have never had a better conversation with her, not only very friendly but also interesting, with a lot of talk about White House life, mostly when Jack was President, but also her return visits there and her relations with LBJ, towards whom she was surprisingly friendly and favourable, and with Nixon, to whom she was much less so.
Jack, she said, except occasionally, did not much like formally arranged dinner parties, because he could not decide in advance whom he wanted to see. But he would often ring up at 5 or 6 o"clock and say, "Get somebody for dinner." He did not greatly like having Ethel and Bobby, not because he didn"t like Ethel, he did rather, and certainly not because he didn"t like Bobby, but because Bobby was too much his conscience and kept demanding to know what he had done, what he had decided about this or that, telling him what he ought to do in the future. Bradlees (Washington Post), who turned out to be snakes-in-the-gra.s.s, were there a lot. But David and Sissie Gore came more than anybody else, she said, so much so that it became difficult because David would always chuck everything else, which in my view was probably his duty (the main duty of amba.s.sadors is to have close contact with the heads of the government to which they are accredited) but which led to his breaking long-arranged dinner engagements at which he was to be the guest of honour and created some Washington ill-feeling.
Then the dancing guests began to arrive and the whole thing became rather overcrowded and hot for a time, but I sat this out, and subsequently had an extremely agreeable evening-as indeed did Jennifer. We stayed, amazingly, until 3.45, and walked home in the dawn, a thing we haven"t done for many years. I even danced three times, led on to the floor the first time by Mrs William Rees-Mogg.
FRIDAY, 9 JUNE. London and East Hendred.
I had a morning of London errands, including buying some books in Hatchards, where I had a conversation as on a stage with Pam Hartwell, i.e. addressed by her to the whole shop. I then met Robert Armstrong at Brooks"s before driving to East Hendred in the afternoon. The Beaumarchais" arrived to stay at 7 o"clock.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 10 JUNE. East Hendred.
At 11.30 the Beaumarchais" and I went to Oxford and did a quick tour, including climbing to the lantern at the top of the Sheldonian, which I discovered only six months ago and which gives a splendid view. It is curious how many people one meets in the street in Oxford; between us we saw Isaiah Berlin, Oliver Franks,79 Roger Makins (Sherfield),80 and one or two others. Eric Rolls and the Dougla.s.s Caters81 to lunch at East Hendred. Drove the Beaumarchais" over the Downs to the Blue Boar on a most beautiful evening.
SUNDAY, 11 JUNE. East Hendred.
Took the Beaumarchais" to Sevenhampton, where Ann also had Bonham Carters, Levers and Mark Amory82 for lunch. Then a tremendous afternoon of games. I played croquet with Mark Amory, who is a very good games-player, but who didn"t know croquet very well, and beat him rather easily; then three sets of tennis (again a satisfactory result), and then croquet again. Stayed until 7.30. A perfect day, not very hot, but strong sunshine, and altogether very satisfactory.
WEDNESDAY, 14 JUNE. Strasbourg and Paris.
Commission meeting at 9.00, then into the Parliament for a short time before reluctantly leaving for Paris by avion taxi. To a luncheon at the Quai d"Orsay given by Guiringaud for the OECD ministers. A confused, disorganized lunch. I admittedly had not said that I was going until that morning, but at first there was no place for me, nor was there a place for Blumenthal (US Secretary of the Treasury) or for the Austrian Vice-Chancellor (Androsch), but eventually things were vaguely sorted out.
In the afternoon to the Chateau de la Muette for a series of bilateral meetings which were the purpose of my Paris visit. First, three-quarters of an hour with Blumenthal, in which I ran through my thoughts about European monetary stability, explained what we had in mind, and got a very satisfactory acceptance by him that the Americans were in effect perfectly happy about this.
Then a meeting with Malcolm Fraser of Australia. Perhaps as a result of my meeting with Garland and pressure from his officials, he was for once out to be pleasant. He wished to have a wide-ranging conversation about the Summit, the Third World, etc. That went more or less all right, and at the end we had a quick exchange of views about bilateral relations in which I stated our position, and we broke up without too much difficulty.
After this I had a meeting with Vance, who is very good, compared with Fraser or Blumenthal, at making these courtesy bilaterals easy and interesting. There was a curious element of American grandeur, not in his manner at allvery much the reversebut in the room: the standard of the United States, the standard of the Secretary of State, the seal of the United States were all erected behind the desk in this rather small, temporary room in the Chateau de la Muette which he was occupying for thirty-six hours, and there was even half a platoon of marines outside. With three or four other people present we talked mainly about MTNs and the forthcoming Summit.
Then I went into the Plenary Session for twenty-five minutes and made a perfectly sensible, pointless seven-minute speech, which the officials were very keen that I should make, about the trade pledge.83 I then left at about 6.30 escorted by two motards and had the most terrifying, ludicrous, ridiculous drive to Le Bourget. It was the peak of the rush hour around the Peripherique and the traffic was absolutely jammed up. But these two motorcyclists carved their way through so that we got there in twenty-three minutes, mostly going between 50 and 70 miles an hour, with the chance of a major accident at least one in five I would have thought. How ordinary French motorists put up with this behaviour I cannot understand. The motards, given the fact that they were trying to perform this lunacy, did absolutely spectacularly; they thumped and occasionally kicked small cars out of the way, with their feet off the pedals of their motorbikes.
I couldn"t look most of the time. I fastened my seat belt in the back, a thing I have never done before, and tried to read the newspapers. We hit one car a glancing blow and bounced off a sort of bal.u.s.trade on another occasion. However, we eventually got there without any grave damage to anybody, but I do not think it is a sensible way for the French police to behave, and it is certainly a disagreeable way to go through Paris on a particularly beautiful early June evening. I suppose it cut an hour off the drive, but this was hardly worth it, particularly as I had nothing serious to do at the other end.
I never thought I would find a little avion taxi such a haven of peace, like a hammock in a summer garden. We flew off into a cloudless sky, over the valley of the Marne and the plains of Champagne, through Lorraine, over the Vosges and down into Colmar. Drove to La Clairiere (hotel) at Illhaeusern, where Jennifer, Hayden and Laura already were.
THURSDAY, 15 JUNE. Strasbourg and Brussels.
Drove into Strasbourg and to the Parliament at 11.15. Then with Jennifer took Tam Dalyell84 to lunch. We much enjoyed talking to Tam, who, although slightly dotty, is in a curious way a first-rate man, with great self-confidence and interest. To the Parliament to answer questions for forty-five minutes mainly about languages in the enlarged Community, and then back to Brussels by avion taxi.
FRIDAY, 16 JUNE. Brussels.
A day of Berlaymont meetings, including two with Gundelach. These were intended to be a general run round agriculture and fisheries policy and also something of an attempt to repair one or two slightly damaged bridges between him and me. I find it very difficult to make up my mind completely about Gundelach. His qualities are great; is his trickiness equally so?85 Home at 7 o"clock, where the Jakie Astors had arrived to stay.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 17 JUNE. Brussels.
A remarkable three-hour expedition to the battlefields in the Ypres salient. We had a key prepared in Donald Maitland"s office, which was extremely valuable, for otherwise I think we would have been completely lost. We went to Menin and then along the Menin Road between there and Ypres and turned off and saw a system of trenches and a museum. Then on to Hill 60, h.e.l.lfire Corner, and into Ypres itself to see the Menin Gate with its vast panels of names (56,000,1 think) of those who did not have individual graves. Then on to Pa.s.schendaele, to the huge cemetery there. The whole expedition was interesting, even fascinating, but harrowing and oppressive, and we were glad at the end to get out of the area. Why does Waterloo have no similar effect? Is it a difference of numbers or a difference of a hundred years? We drove to Bruges where we lunched without much appet.i.te, went to see the Memling and returned to Brussels.
SUNDAY, 18 JUNE. Brussels.
We took the Astors (and Phillips" with children) on a surprisingly beautiful day and picnicked in the field near Maillen in the near Ardennes where we had been before. The site wasn"t as successful as previously because we had forgotten that in June, as opposed to April or October, the "corn is as high as an elephant"s eye", and as a result the view was almost blocked out. After lunch we played cricket on the road, organized by Hayden, interruptingor interrupted bya local bicycle race, so that there was a certain clash of English and Belgian cultures. However, no trouble.
MONDAY, 19 JUNE. Brussels.
A 12.30 meeting with the President of Mali. An agreeable man, accompanied by two or three others in magnificent robes. There was not a great deal to talk about.
Then with Hayden and Roger Beetham to give Larry Lamb and the Sun"s political editor (Anthony Shrimsley) lunch. It ought to have been more successful than it was. Lamb, who had impressed me greatly in Manchester six weeks before, seemed on rather bad form. Shrimsley quite intelligent, but the whole thing not as pointful as it should have been.
TUESDAY, 20 JUNE. Brussels.
10.30 meeting with Raymond Vouel, who complained, with some justification, about Davignon running around and organizing all sorts of cartels which were offending the compet.i.tion rules of the Commission. Then Andreas Whittam Smith, the City editor of the Daily Telegraph86 who was an extremely good interviewer, agreeable, and taking points very quickly. And then, at noon, an extraordinary ceremony organized by the Anciens Combattants de l"Europe, who gave me a medal. It was mainly got up by the French, but there were about eight high British Legion officials, and the actual presentation was made by Rommel"s Chief of Staff, who not surprisingly was extremely old, an echt Iron Cross German General, who did it all with considerable style.
WEDNESDAY, 21 JUNE. Brussels.
Day-long Commission over by 6.00. Dinner for the change of presidency from the Danes to the Germans, which, at Astrid von Hardenberg"s87 good suggestion, we had arranged at the Maison d"Erasme in Anderlecht. I don"t think Erasmus had actually lived there for more than six or seven monthsdid he ever live anywhere for much longer? - but it is an attractive sixteenth-century house, well run as a museum, and a good place for a dinner. The dinner went very well. I had Madame de Nanteuil and Frau Sigrist on either side of me. I made a rather erudite speech, partly about Erasmus, partly about the Vikings, partly about Greenland, which Hayden had prepared very well for me, and we then listened to a good, sensible, rather long speech from Riberholdt, followed by a somewhat misty one about the Nibelungen from Sigrist.
THURSDAY, 22 JUNE. Brussels, Paris and Brussels.
11.43 TEE to Paris with Crispin. Worked extremely hard all the way and then lunched very late in Paris. At 4.45 to the Elysee. Giscard rather impressively received us two minutes ahead of time, and we talked for about an hour and a half. It was one of the best conversations I have had with him. We talked a little about economic growth, in which we agreed that we had the tactical and cosmetic problem of making the Bremen European Council seem worthwhile while knowing that Schmidt was not willing to say very much until he got to the Bonn Western Summit. Then we went on to monetary arrangements in Europe, in which Giscard was extremely hard and firm and clearly determined to go ahead. The curious effect of this was that, perhaps because he was more interested, because we were discussing something more closely, interrupting each other a good deal, he became, if anything, rather smaller, less like a would-be Louis XIV, or even General de Gaulle, and more as I remember him as a Finance Minister; less making p.r.o.nouncements as a head of state, more discussing a real subject.
Towards the end he suddenly raised the question of the reform of Community inst.i.tutions, saying that this was a personal view of his, a lot of the French Government didn"t share it, etc., but he was particularly worried about the presidency of the Council of Ministers and of the European Council and thought these ought to be done on a semi-permanent basis by someone who had been a major figure in the national government of a big country. I wasn"t clear whether he intended this to be something-which indeed it might be-which would greatly devalue the Commission, or something which could be amalgamated with the presidency of the Commission, though I doubt this.
From the Elysee I went to see first the Hendersons and then the Beaumarchais" before travelling back to Brussels alone on the 8.30 TEE, dining-or rather ordering dinner, because it was almost completely uneatable-along the Oise. But I still like rolling across the plains of northern France on a long summer evening, even with a lot of clouds, which at least produce constantly changing light.
FRIDAY, 23 JUNE. Brussels.
Into the office late to see Amba.s.sador Harriman, not, however, Averell, but an agreeable Nigerian who is the United Nations Commissioner for Anti-Apartheid. I then gave a drink, with a speech and questions, to fourteen Dutch editors, lunched at home with Jennifer alone, and returned to the office to give an interview to an allegedly 7-million-circulation j.a.panese newspaper: a rather formal visit from the editor and three supporting journalists, but fortunately it seemed at the time to go rather well and lasted no less than one and a half hours.
Woodrow and Verushka Wyatt arrived to stay the weekend, but I had to go to the Palais d"Egmont for a dinner for the Federation of Socialist Parties which was meeting to draw up a direct elections manifesto. I had bilateral conversations with Brandt and den Uyl before dinner, at dinner with Mitterrand and Craxi,88 and after dinner with Soares of Portugal (for a long time), and Gonzales of Spain (for a short time). It was a good round-up of the great and the good of the European Left. There were brief speeches at dinner from Simonet, who was giving the dinner, Pontillon, who was the nominal President, and Brandt, who was much the most senior man there.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 24 JUNE. Brussels.
Took the Wyatts for my regular giro of Brussels, from the Foret de Soignes to the Grand"Place. K. B. Andersen, the Danish Foreign Minister, accompanied by Ersbll and Riberholdt, arrived for an hour"s meeting at home before dinner. Then, at 8.30, we turned this into a social dinner as a mark of appreciation of K. B. Andersen"s presidency of the Council of Ministers. This went very well. The Wyatts got on excellently with the Danes, and the Danes were nice and sensible, as they nearly always are. Half seriously they attributed Danish prosperity to the fact that they had never had any basic industries worth speaking of to run down: no coal, no steel, no shipbuilding, no textiles, no heavy engineering. All done on pigs, beer and porcelain.
MONDAY, 26 JUNE. Brussels and Luxembourg.
Jennifer left for London after a fourteen-day visit to Brussels. Following the new Chinese Amba.s.sador, I saw Talboys,89 the deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, whom I like very much indeed and whom I got without great difficulty to say quite clearly that the sheep meat regime, as at present proposed, caused them little difficulty. It was possible future changes which worried them.
Avion taxi to Luxembourg for the Foreign Affairs Council, which sat for five hours until nearly 10 p.m. There was a good deal of wrangling about the treatment of human rights in the Lome Convention, of which most notably David Owen, but several other people too, were making very heavy weather.
TUESDAY, 27 JUNE. Luxembourg and Brussels.
I took time off from the Council to see John Davies, the British Conservative foreign affairs spokesman, and give him some briefing about our att.i.tude towards Australia and New Zealand. He was easily rea.s.sured on these points and anxious to be helpful, being more concerned about African questions and Soviet penetration there.
Lunch for Genscher and two of his collaborators at the Golf Club, the postponed meal from before he took over the presidency. Not a great deal of business was discussed but he was interesting in an anecdotal way.
Back to the Council from 3.15 to 6.30.1 then decided I had had enough and returned to Brussels by avion taxi. I had Charlie Douglas-Home90 to dinner and enjoyed talking to him, partly about Iberian enlargement and partly about the royal prerogative in Britain, on which he is writing a book.
THURSDAY, 29 JUNE. Brussels and Bath.
12.35 plane to London, and then in the early evening of a day of pouring rain had a horrible slow drive to Bath, for the university dinner before my honorary degree the following morning. I enjoyed the dinner, liked the Vice-Chancellor and his wife and the Mayor and Mayoress of Bath, as well as the Chancellor, Lord Hinton, and delivered quite a reasonably successful twenty-minute speech of the occasion to an audience of about 150/200.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 1 JULY. East Hendred.
To Buscot Parsonage at 9.15 p.m. for Diana Phipps"s great opera ball. It really was a most extraordinary occasion, dinner for five hundred people, at tables of ten or twelve, all placed. My only concession was my Abruzzan cloak over a dinner jacket, and there was a fair number of other people who were dressed as no more than the conductor or the audience. There were some spectacular costumes, some successful, some not. George Weidenfeld,91 as some vague eighteenth-century figure, looked surprisingly convincing, Claus Moser92 arguably a little less so because he had a more elaborate costume. Noel Annan as Prince Gremin also looked surprisingly authentic, as though he was in a perfectly natural uniform for him to wear as Vice-Chancellor or Provost.
The most spectacular-looking woman was Jessica Douglas-Home as the governess in The Turn of the Screw, who arrived in a governess cart with her two children, quickly disposed of for the evening, though the horse remained and was rather a nuisance. The Harlechs were paired as the Pharaoh and Phareen from Aida, and poor David, who was sitting next but one to me at dinner, was so encrusted in golden armour that he had to spend most of his time trying to get bits of breast-plate off in order to be able to talk, eat, or do almost anything (he had already removed his helmet). Dinner went on for the greater part of the time we were there. We left about 12.45, as we were both tired. The weather was sad. Nonetheless it didn"t ruin the occasion, which was a fantastic feat of organization (and extravagance) on Diana"s part.
MONDAY, 3 JULY. East Hendred, Warwickshire and London.
Accompanied by Nicko Henderson, I drove to Stoneleigh to open the Royal Show at 11.15. A curious, rather enjoyable, gathering. I addressed an audience of somewhere between two and four thousand, who were some distance away from me on a cold, windy morning. They listened surprisingly well to some tough warning words about milk, and some more acceptable ones about European monetary arrangements. Then a tour of part of the Show, which was impressive. Then a press conference, which I had been reluctant to do, at which rather sensible questions were asked, and then lunch in the Royal Pavilion, where the admirable Henry Plumb sat surrounded by two d.u.c.h.esses, the old d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester and the less old d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire.
Then with Nicko by train from Coventry to Euston for my meeting with Callaghan from 6.00 to 7.20. On European monetary advance he was obviously rather "miffed" (indeed I think this was, rather surprisingly, the word he actually used) that he hadn"t been more closely consulted, although in fact (unless he took the view that Schmidt and Giscard should never meet on their own without him) he had nothing to be "miffed" about, because he had already been sent (whether he had read it I was not sure) a version of the so-called Schulmann/Clappier paper,1 which was more than I had seen at that stage, or indeed the Italians or the Little Five. However, the significant thing was that he felt "miffed" and announced that he was declining the invitation to come before lunch to Bremen on the following Thursday in order to have a tripart.i.te meeting. He claimed that it was very difficult because of a Cabinet meeting, but not with much conviction. As usual, on these recent occasions, he was agreeable, sensible, affable.
At the end of our discussion Callaghan kept me back alone for a short time, and then asked what I wanted done about my re-nomination as President.2 He didn"t want there to be any suggestion, as there had been last time with the French, that they were hanging back so far as Ortoli"s renomination was concerned. Would I like him to propose it at Bremen? I said I hardly thought this was necessary, and it was not exactly the same position as with the French in 1974, because he was not occupying the presidency (of the Council). However, it ended by his saying that he would do anything I wished, and adding: "Would you be all right if Mrs Thatcher were to be there after October?" In all electoral conversations I have had with him, most of them conducted tangentially in this way, he has never given the impression of overconfidence, which is very sensible on his part.
TUESDAY, 4 JULY. London and Luxembourg.
Took off from Northolt for Luxembourg just after 8 o"clock, entirely alone apart from the two pilots in the little plane, and a pretty disagreeable journey it was with the whole of Western Europe covered in endless layers of dirty cloud of almost limitless cubic capacity.
To the Parliament at 10.15, only a little late for the beginning of the Genscher speech, and sat in until 1.00, when I made a brief intervention. In the afternoon I worked in the Cravat Hotel, trying to clear my thoughts by writing a sort of letter to myself in advance of the Bremen Summit. Then I saw Deane Hinton, the American Amba.s.sador, he having come to deliver some sort of demarche which I, or indeed he, didn"t take too seriously, about the dangers of the MTNs going wrong in Geneva. This was a predictable artillery barrage before the engagement.
In the evening I drove in pouring rain down to Ehnen on the Mosel and the German frontier, where I had last dined on a baking evening almost exactly two years ago, and where on this occasion I gave Gaston Thorn, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, a three-hour dinner. I discovered that he had been fairly well briefed, but not shown the paper, about the Clappier/Schulmann work, having received a visit the previous day from Clappier. Clappier had done Luxembourg and Rome, and Schulmann it appeared had been to Belgium, Holland and Denmark. n.o.body, alas, had thought to go to Ireland.
WEDNESDAY, 5 JULY. Luxembourg, Bonn and Brussels.
A difficult Commission meeting from 9.00 to 10.15. Ortoli tried to make a great row with Vredeling because of the insulting remarks which Vredeling had made about the French Government at a press conference in Rome following the breakdown of the Social Council, at which the French had been isolated and intransigent. Vredeling had some justification, although he had obviously blown off rather foolishly. What was striking on this occasion was that this hot-tempered, irascible man didn"t rise much to Ortoli"s complaint, which, as Francis told me subsequently, was a great disappointment to him. Vredeling confined himself to saying that he had been mistranslated, that he had used the Dutch word "dum", which he implausibly claimed meant "without reasons given", rather than, as one might a.s.sume, "stupid", "imbecile". (I was subsequently a.s.sured by the Dutch Foreign Minister that what it meant was precisely "stupid", if not something stronger.) Crispin and I then left to motor to Bonn. Rather good country between Trier and Coblenz, though the weather was dismal as on every recent day. Bonn at 1 o"clock (German time) for lunch with Schmidt, for once not alone, but he with Schulmann and I with Crispin. This lasted until 3.40 and was immensely worthwhile. Schmidt began by saying, not altogether untypically, that he was feeling very unwell. He had got some bug in Zambia, as a result of which he could not eat much. He drank a rather eccentric mixture of port and coca-cola, and ate at least as much as I did, but this was because the meal was, by any standards, strictly inedible, and he was presumably used to it. At one stage he told us how he ran the whole of Germany from the Chancellery with a staff of, I think, thirty-eight, and it was at least clear that none of the thirty-eight was a qualified chef.
However, the conversation more than made up for this. He described his various plans for Bremen, and who had been consulted and who had not. I told him about Callaghan"s slight sense of being left out and warned him he ought to try and deal with this. He gave us the paper, and also gave us some British paper which had been sent to them but of which I had never heard previously, and indeed never heard of again. We also talked about MTNs, about which he expressed some apprehension, having obviously been pressurized by the Americans a little, as we had, and being quite willing to give way to them, but I said the moment for that had certainly not arisen. But it was altogether a highly satisfactory and friendly conversation, in which at one stage he went out of his way, which was peculiarly gracious for him, to say that I underestimated how much an influence I had had at our various meetings on the whole development of his thought on European monetary affairs and, indeed, European affairs in general.
Crispin and I then drove back in filthy weather to Brussels and went into the office for about an hour and a half. Ortoli insisted on coming to see me at 7.15 and I gave him a brief rundown on Bonn, including, with slight hesitation, showing but not giving him the Clappier/Schulmann paper. Schmidt had given it to me with great stress on secrecy, saying, which was true, that the Little Five, and indeed I believe the Italians, had not actually seen the paper, which made me a little hesitant about showing it to anyone else, particularly knowing the state of Schmidt/Ortoli relations.
THURSDAY, 6 JULY. Brussels and Bremen.
12.15 avion taxi for Bremen and the European Council. The proceedings began with a lunch in the Rathaus, a magnificent building, three hundred years older than the Hamburg late nineteenth-century edifice. There was a notable absence, which was generally interpreted as being deliberate, of Callaghan and Owen. Then a very good speech from the Burgomeister, a slightly less good one from Schmidt.
We started the Council in another room in the same building at 3.30, the British having arrived just before, marching in in single file, like a jungle expedition,3 first Callaghan, then Owen, Palliser, Hunt, Couzens, McCaffrey,4 McNally,5 etc., and then about fifteen bearers carrying thirty red despatch boxes. G.o.d knows what they were all supposed to have in them. The afternoon meeting lasted until 6.30, which was longer than I expected, and dealt, inter alia, with the Ortoli paper on concerted growth which I introduced and about which there was not too bad a discussion.
Then we rea.s.sembled-it was not clear whether for an early dinner or for a meeting of heads of government and me before dinner. The "Big Three" were missing and so the rest of us chatted away in our usual desultory fashion. The first of the "Big Three" to arrive, as indeed was appropriate as he was the host, was Schmidt, looking very gloomy, who came up to me and said, "Things have gone very badly with Callaghan." Ten minutes later Giscard arrived and gave Thorn, Tindemans and me an equally dismal report, though rather differently expressed, saying that he had had another go at Callaghan after the tripart.i.te talk and it seemed as though he wished to stand out; nothing more could be done with him.
Then Callaghan arrived, obviously not in a very good mood either, and, indeed, his demeanour at dinner, when he sat at the end of the table in a way at once aloof and dejected, can best be described as surly. However, n.o.body"s mood was very good so that we had a thoroughly pointless dinner, neither gossiping nor transacting any business. n.o.body, not even as on some previous occasions Giscard and I, managed to get any general conversation going at all, partly because I was feeling too gloomy about the news to want to try. Whether he was equally gloomy I don"t know.
At about 9.30 we settled down for the restricted meeting proper. This continued until midnight and went much better than I would have expected from the pre-dinner reports and the atmosphere at dinner. Schmidt began by asking Giscard to introduce their joint paper. This was put round and there was an adjournment while people read it. During this I told Giscard across the table that he had left out one rather important point: that was the deposit of equivalent amounts of national currencies to the amounts deposited in gold and dollars with the European Currency Fund. This he accepted perfectly well, and then asked me, rather surprisingly, whether I had shown the paper to Ortoli, to which I simply said, "Yes."
We then settled down to a general discussion. In contrast with Copenhagen three months before, a substantial part was played by Italy and the Little Five. There was no question of it being just a foursome between the Big Three and me. Andreotti, Thorn, Tindemans, Jrgensen, van Agt and indeed Lynch all spoke quite a bit. Callaghan attracted the most attention. They wanted to see which way he would jump, and on the whole he did not jump too unfriendlily. At one point he raised the question: "What was the relationship of the problems of convergence and the transfer of resources with the currency point which was being put first? Ought they not all to advance together?" He put this question to Giscard, who said I had better answer, so I did, incomprehensibly to everybody else-at first at any rate-but successfully from Callaghan"s point of view, by quoting the old bit of Walcheren doggerel: Great Chatham with his sabre drawn